Open Days; Camellias; Vireyas

It is the 2nd of April, Camellia season is just around the corner here in sunny Queensland, and yes, that’s in Australia. Vireya rhododendron have been flowering beautifully after the rain and will continue throughout the year as they do.

The early flowering sasanquas camellias started seriously a few weeks ago, and because of the somewhat unseasonal hot weather, the flowers have struggled in the 27 to 29 degree C. heat. We have had showers for the past week and they are enjoying the cooler change – it’s only 24 today. Little Pearl, Pure Silk, Jennifer Susan, Sparkling Burgundy, Bonanza and Mikuni Ko (two of the earliest for us), to name a few, are all beautiful, filling the air with their sweet scent.

Early flowering japonicas like Arejishi, Takanini, Alba Plena and Little Man, are in flower, bringing colour throughout the garden.

The sasanquas will continue for some weeks with the later ones like Bert Jones flowering until June, and many spot flowering throughout the season. Some may think that this us an early close to our season, but we have had flowers on the early sasanquas since January.

Japonicas will come in to flower over the next few weeks and will continue through to August. For us, anything flowering after this and into September is too late – it is getting hot again, and the flowers start to suffer.

Our season has been a little crazy over the past 5 or 6 months. Many japonicas continued to flower very late- in to December. This changed the usual ‘new growth’ pattern which happens September and December here. Instead we had flowers. Walking the garden now, some japonicas are still putting on new growth, and developing flower buds at the same time. We put this down to the exceptional rain events that we have experienced.

But is is all good, the plants will do what they need to do according to the season, and they will still be beautiful.

We will start our open days next week. See the dates in the next entry.